Review: ‘Wired to Create’ Shows the Science of a Messy Process

Recently, I found myself with a book contract and a deadline to produce 80,000 words, so I turned to some author friends for advice. Their answers were nearly always the same: Don’t do what I did.

These critically acclaimed, award-winning writers had produced their best-sellers via creative processes that most described as disorganized and nonlinear. Careful plans had crumbled as they had encountered unexpected turns in their research and thinking.

After reading “Wired to Create,” by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, I’m inclined to think that these writers took the right path.

Research into the nature of creativity has exploded the past 50 years, and scientists are finding that it’s rarely a well-defined, step-by-step process. Picasso drew 45 numbered sketches, each in multiple versions, while working on his famous painting “Guernica.”

Some of the figures in the finished painting appeared as they had in the first or second version of a sketch, but others continued to be revised even on the final canvas. Picasso’s process was “more chaotic than controlled, more spontaneous than linear,” Mr. Kaufman and Ms. Gregoire write. (Read an excerpt.)

Together, they have created a satisfying overview of creativity research that is likely to provide nuggets of wisdom to even the most seasoned creative spirit.

Readers looking for tips on how to increase creativity will find plenty here. Some of the most tested — go for a walk, take a shower, let your mind wander — are not revolutionary. The book contains too many platitudes — “Inspiration favors the prepared mind” — oversimplified lists and seemingly arbitrary rules of thumb, and these flaws could have made it another forgettable tome in the vast library on creativity.

Instead, “Wired to Create” rises above these shortcomings by emphasizing the complexities and contradictions that distinguish creative people. “Insightful problem solving can’t be boiled down to any single way of thinking,” the authors say. Creative people have messy processes, and often messy minds, full of contradictions.

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CreditPatricia Wall/The New York Times

Contrary to the well-worn notion that creativity resides in the right side of the brain, research shows that creativity is a product of the whole brain, relying especially on what the authors call the “imagination network” — circuits devoted to tasks like making personal meaning, creating mental simulations and taking perspective.

While creative people run the gamut of personalities, Dr. Kaufman’s research has shown that openness to experience is more highly correlated to creative output than I.Q., divergent thinking or any other personality trait. This openness often yields a drive for exploration, which “may be the single most important personal factor predicting creative achievement,” the authors write.

These are people energized and motivated by the possibility of discovering new information: “It’s the thrill of the knowledge chase that most excites them.”

Once the idea is found, alas, the creative process begins to resemble something more like grinding execution. It’s still creative, but it requires more focus and less daydreaming — one reason highly creative people tend to exhibit mindfulness and mental wandering.

“Creativity is a process that reflects our fundamentally chaotic and multifaceted nature,” the authors write. “It is both deliberate and uncontrollable, mindful and mindless, work and play.”

On Jan. 2, the novelist George R.R. Martin announced that he had missed his (already delayed) deadline for “The Winds of Winter,” the highly anticipated sixth book in his best-selling fantasy series “Game of Thrones.” The sixth season of the HBO series will proceed without a completed version of the book it’s based on.

“I tried, I promise you. I failed,” the author told fans on his blog. “Truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Perhaps Mr. Martin has adopted the mind-set that the author Denise Shekerjian identified among the 40 MacArthur grant recipients she interviewed for her 1990 book, “Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born.” Ms. Shekerjian called it “staying loose,” a way of embracing the uncertainty inherent in the creative process, “often without regard for practicality or efficiency.”

The magic moment of epiphany, Ms. Shekerjian wrote, often follows an extended period of uncertainty. Sometimes, the writing just doesn’t go well — and then suddenly it does. According to Dr. Kaufman and Ms. Gregoire, the ability to tolerate and embrace the discomfort of this process is a hallmark of creative people.

“Those murky, ambiguous places, as highly imaginative people well know, are quite often where the creative magic happens.”